Chapter VI: Part 6

He sent Tom Tripe packing, with a flea in his ear for Chamu's benefit, and a whispered word of friendship. Later he drove Tess down-hill in the dog-cart, first changing his own disguise for American clothes because the saises might be up and about when he returned at dawn, and for them to see him in the costume of a sais would only have added to the risk of putting Gungadhura's men on the scent of Yasmini. Saises are almost the most prolific source of rumor, but he had a means of stilling their tongues.

There was little to say during the dark drive. They were affectionate, those two, without too many words when it came to leave-taking, each knowing the other's undivided love. Tess had money--a revolver-- cartridges--some food--sufficient change of clothing for a week-- sun-spectacles; he reassured himself twice on all those points.

"If you're camel-sick, fetch it up and carry, on," he advised, "it'll soon pass. Then a hot bath, if you can get it, before you stiffen. Failing that, oil."

The camels, with Yasmini and her women already mounted, were kneeling in the darkness outside the house of Mukhum Dass.

"Come!" called Yasmini. "Hurry!"

Dick kissed his wife--waved his hand to Yasmini--helped Tess on to the last camel in the kneeling line--and they were off, the camel-men not needing to shout to make those Bikaniri racers rise and start. They were gone like ghosts into the darkness, making absolutely no noise, before Dick could steady his nervous horse.

Then Ismail wanted to tie Yasmini's abandoned horse to the tail of the dog-cart, but Dick sent him off to stable it somewhere at the other side of town to help throw trackers off the scent. He himself drove home by a very wide circuit indeed, threading his cautious way among the hills toward the gold-diggings, where he drove back and forward several times around the edges of the dump, in order that the saises might see the red dirt on the wheels afterward and believe, and tell where he had been.

There was some risk that a panther, or even a tiger might try for the horse in the dark, but that was not the kind of danger that disturbed Dick Blaine much. A pistol at point-blank range is as good as a rifle most nights of the week. He arrived home after daylight with a very weary horse, and ordered the saises to wash the wheels at once, in order that the color of the dirt might be impressed on them thoroughly. They were quite sure he had been at the mine all night. Then he paid off Chamu and the cook and sent them packing.

He was looking for the beggars, to pay them, when Tom Tripe's dog arrived and began hunting high and low for Tess. Trotters had something in his mouth, wrapped in cloth and then again in leather. He refused to give it to Dick, defying threats and persuasion both. Dick offered him food, but the dog had apparently eaten--water, but he would not drink.

Then the three beggars came, and watched Dick's efforts with the interest of spectators at a play.

"Messenge!" said Bimbu finally, nodding at the dog. That much was pretty obvious.

"Princess!" he added, seeing Dick was still puzzled. It flashed across Dick's mind that on the dresser in the bedroom was Tess's hat that Yasmini had worn. Doubtless to a dog's keen nose it smelt of both of them. He ran to fetch it, the dog followed him, eager to get into the house. He offered the hat to the dog, who sniffed it and yelped eagerly.

"Bang goes fifty dollars, then!" he laughed.

He took the hat to Bimbu.

"Can you ride a camel?" he demanded.

The man nodded. "Another would drive it."

"Do you know where to get one?"

Bimbu nodded again.

"Take this hat, so that the dog will follow you, and ride by camel to the home of Utirupa Singh. Here is money for the camel. If you overtake the princess there will be a fabulous reward. If you get there soon after she does there will be a good reward. If you take too long on the way there will be nothing for you but a beating! Go--hurry--get a move on! And don't you lose the dog!"

Chapter Twelve

There are they who yet remember, when the depot's forty jaws Through iron teeth that chatter to the tramping of a throng Spew out the crushed commuter in obedience to laws That all accord observance and that all agree are wrong; When rush and din and hubbub stir the too responsive vein Till head and heart are conquered by the hustle roaring by And the sign looks good that glitters on the temple gate of Gain, - "There are spaces just as luring where the leagues untrodden lie!"

There are they who yet remember 'mid the fever of exchange, When the hot excitement throttles and the millions make or break, How a camel's silent footfall on the ashen desert range Swings cushioned into distances where thoughts unfettered wake, And the memory unbidden plucks an unconverted heart Till the glamour goes from houses and emotion from the street, And the truth glares good and gainly in the face of 'change and mart: "There are deserts more intensive. There are silences as sweet!"

"Ready for anything! If I weaken, tie me on the camel!"

There are camels and camels--more kinds than there are of horses. The Bishareen of the Sudan is not a bad beast, but compared to the Bikaniri there are no other desert mounts worth a moment's consideration. Fleet as the wind, silent as its own shadow, enduring as the long hot- season of its home, the trained Bikaniri swings into sandy distances with a gait that is a gallop really--the only saddle-beast of all that lifts his four feet from the ground at once, seeming to spurn the very laws of gravity.

They are favored folk who come by first-class Bikaniri camels, for the better sort are rare, hard held to, and only to be bought up patiently by twos and ones. Fourteen of them in one string, each fit that instant for a distance-race with death itself, was perhaps the best proof possible of Yasmini's influence on the country-side. They were gathered for her and held in readiness by men who loved her and detested Gungadhura.

Normally the drivers would have taken a passenger apiece, and seven of the animals would have been ample; but this was a night and a dawn when speed was nine-tenths of the problem, and Yasmini had spared nothing--no man, no shred of pains or influence,--and proposed to spare no beast.

They rode in single file, each man with a led camel ridden by a woman, except that Yasmini directed her own mount and for the most part showed the way, her desert-reared guide being hard put to keep his own animal abreast of her. There is a gift--a trick of riding camels, very seldom learned by the city-born; and he, or she, who knows the way of it enjoys the ungrudged esteem of desert men all the way from China to Damascus, from Peshawar to Morocco. The camels detect a skilled hand even more swiftly than a horse does and, like the horse, do their best work for the rider who understands. So the only sound, except for a gurgle now and then, and velvet-silent footfalls on the level sand, was the grunts of admiration of the men behind. They had muffled all the camel-bells.

When they started the night was deepest purple, set densely with a mass of colored jewels; even the whitest of the stars stole color from the rest. But gradually, as they raced toward the sky-line and the stars paled, the sky changed into mauve. Then without warning a belt of pale gold shone in the west behind them, and with the false dawn came the cool wind like a legacy from the kindly night-gods to encourage humans to endure the day. A little later than the wind the true dawn came, fiery with hot promise, and Tess on the last camel soon learned the meaning of the cloak Yasmini had made her wear. Worn properly it covers all the face except the eyes, leaving no surface for the hot wind to torture, and saving the lips and lungs from being scorched.

In after years, when Yasmini was intriguing for an empire that in her imagination should control the world, she had the telegraph and telephone at times to aid her, as well as the organized, intricate system of British Government to manipulate from behind the scenes; but now she was racing against the wires, and in no mood to appeal for help to a government that she did not quite understand as yet, but intended to foot royally in any case.

The easiest thing Gungadhura could do, and surest thing he would attempt once word should reach him that she had vanished from Sialpore would be to draw around her a network of his own men. Watchers from the hills and lurkers in the sand-dunes could pass word along of the direction she had taken; and the sequel, if Gungadhura was only quick enough, would depend simply on the loneliness or otherwise of the spot where she could be brought to bay. If there were no witnesses his problem would be simple. But if murder seemed too dangerous, there was the Nesting-place of Seven Swans up in the mountains, as well as other places even lonelier, to which she and Tess could be abducted. Tess might be left, perhaps, to make her own way back and give her own explanation of flight with a maharajah's daughter; but for Yasmini abduction to the hills could only mean one of two things: unthinkable surrender, or sure death by any of a hundred secret means.

So the way they took was wild and lonely, frequented only by the little jackals that eat they alone know what, and watched by unenthusiastic kites that always seemed to be wheeling in air just one last time before flying to more profitable feeding ground. Yet within a thousand paces of the line they took lay a trodden track, well marked by the sun-dried bones of camels (for the camel dies whenever he feels like it, without explanation or regret, and lies down for the purpose in the first uncomfortable place to hand).

Yasmini and the guide between them, first one, then the other assuming the direction, led the way around low hills and behind the long, blown folds of sand netted scantly down by tufted, dry grass, always avoiding open spaces where they might be seen, or hollows too nearly shut in on both sides, where there might be ambush.

Twice they were seen before the sun was two hours high, the first time by a caravan of merchants headed toward Sialpore, who breasted a high dune half a mile away and took no notice; but that would not prevent the whole caravansary in the city's midst from knowing what they had seen, and just how long ago, and headed which way, within ten minutes after they arrived--as, in fact, exactly happened.

The second party to catch sight of them consisted of four men on camels, whose rifles, worn military fashion with a sling, betrayed them as Gungadhura's men. "Desert police" he called them. "Takers of tenths" was the popular, and much more accurate description. The four gave chase, for a caravan in a hurry is always likely to pay well for exemption from delay; and coming nearly at right angles they had all the advantage. It was crime to refuse to halt for them, for they were semi-military, uniformed police. Yet their invariable habit of prying into everything and questioning each member of a caravan would be certain to lead to discovery. They had a signal station on the hill two miles behind them, to keep them in touch with other parties, north, south, east and west. It looked like Yasmini's undoing, for they were gaining two for one along the shorter course. Tess fingered the pistol her husband had made her bring, wondering whether Yasmini would dare show fight (not guessing yet the limitless abundance of her daring), and wondering whether she herself would dare reply to the fire of authorized policemen. She did not relish the thought of being an outlaw with a genuine excuse for her arrest.

But the four police were oversure, and Yasmini too quick-witted for them. They took a short cut down into a sandy hollow, letting their quarry get out of sight, plainly intending to wait on rising ground about a thousand yards ahead, where they could foil attempts to circumvent them and, for the present, take matters easy.

Instantly Yasmini changed direction, swinging her camel to the right, down a deep nullah, and leading full pelt at right angles to her real course. It was ten minutes before the men caught sight of them again, and by that time they had nearly drawn abreast, well beyond reasonable rifle range, and were heading back toward their old direction, so that the police had lost advantage, and a stern chase on slower camels was their only hope but one. They fired half a dozen shots by way of calling attention to themselves--then wheeled and raced away toward the signal station on the hill.

Yasmini held her course for an hour after that, until a spur of the hillside and another long fold of the desert shut them off from the signaler's view. There she called a halt, unexpectedly, for the camels did not need it. She was worried about Tess--the one untested link in her chain of fugitives.

"Can you keep on through all the hot day?" she asked. "These other women are as lithe as leopards, for I make them dance. They are better able to endure than cheetahs. But you? Shall I put two women on one camel, and send you back to Sialpore with two men?"

Tess's back ached and she was dizzy, but her own powers had been tested many a time; this was not more than double the strain she had withstood before, and she was aware of strength in reserve, to say nothing of conviction that what Yasmini's maids could do she herself would rather perish than fall short of. There is an element of sheer, pugnacious, unchristian human pride that is said to damn, while it saves the best of us at times.

"Certainly not! I can carry on all day!" she answered.

Yasmini emitted her golden bell-like laugh that expressed such immeasurable understanding and delight in all she understands. (It has overtones that tell of vision beyond the ken of folk who build on mud.)

"The maids shall knead your muscles for you at the other end," she answered. "Courage is good! You are my sister! You shall see things that the West knows nothing of! If those thrice-misbegotten Takers of Tenths had not seen us, we would have reached our goal a little after midday. As it is, they have certainly signaled to another party of Gungadhura's spawn somewhere ahead of us, who will be coming this way with eyes open and a lesson in mind for those who disregard their comrades' challenge to halt and be looted! When I am maharanee there shall be a new system of protecting desert roads! But I dare not try conclusions now. We must take a wide circuit and not reach our destination until night falls. Are you willing?"

"Ready for anything!" said Tess. "If I weaken, tie me on the camel!"

"Good! So speaks a woman! One woman of spirit is the master of a dozen men--always.

They all drank sparingly of tepid water, ate a little of the food each had, and were off again without letting the camels kneel--heading now away from the hills toward a dazzling waste of silver sand, across which the eyes lost all sense of perspective, and all power to separate three objects in a row; a land of mirage and monotony, glittering in places with the aching white of salt deposits.

The heat increased, but the speed never slackened for an instant. Flies emerged from everywhere to fasten on to unprotected skin, and the only relief from them was under the hot cloaks that burned them with the heat absorbed from sun and wind. But even in that ghastly wilderness there were other living things. Now and then a lean leopard stole away from in front of them; and once they saw a man, naked and thinner than a rake, striding along a ridge on heaven knew what errand. There were scorpions everywhere.

Hour after hour, guided by desert-instinct that needs no compass, and ever alert for sky-line watchers, Yasmini and the headman took turns in giving direction, he yielding to her whenever their judgment differed. And whether she was right or not in every instance, she brought them at last to a little desert oasis, where there was brackish water deep down in a sand-hole, and a great rock offered shadow to rest in.

There they lay until the sun declined far enough to lose a little of his power to scorch, and the camels bubbled to one another, thirstless, unwearied, dissatisfied, as the universal way of camels is, kneeling in a circle, rumps outward, each one resentful of the other's neighborhood and, above all, disgruntled at man's tyranny.

"By now," laughed Yasmini, smoking one of Tess's cigarettes in the shadow of the rock, "Gungadhura knows surely that my palace is empty and the bird has flown. Ten dozen different people will have carried to him as many accounts of it, and each will have offered different explanation and advice! I wonder what Jinendra's fat priest has to say about it! Gungadhura will have sent for him. He would hardly ride to the priest through the streets, even in a carriage, with that love-token still raw and smarting with which I marked his face! Two reliable reports will have reached him already as to which direction I have taken. Yet the telegraph will have told him that I have not been seen to cross the border, and he will be wondering--wondering. May he wonder until his brains whirl round and sicken him!"

"What can he do?" suggested Tess.

"Do? He can be spiteful. He will enter my palace and remove the furniture, taking my mother's legacies to his own lair--where I shall recover them all within three weeks--and his own beside! I will be maharanee within the month!"

"Aren't you a wee bit previous?" suggested Tess.

"Not I! I never boast. My mother taught me that. Or when I do boast it is to put men off the scent. I boasted once to Samson sahib when be offered to have me sent to college, telling him I was in the same school as himself and would learn the quicker. He has wondered ever since then what I meant. "Krishna!" she laughed impiously. "I wonder what Samson sahib would not give to have me in his clutches at this minute! Have I told you that Gungadhura plots with the Northwest tribes, and that the English know it? No? Didn't I tell you? Samson sahib would give me almost anything I asked, if he knew that it was I who told his government of Gungadhura's plots; he would know then that with my knowledge to guide him he would be more than a match for Gungadhura, instead of a ball kicked this and that way between Gungadhura and the English! Sometimes I almost think he would consent to try to make me maharanee!"

"Why not give him the chance then?"

"For two reasons. The English too often desert their commissioners. My sure way is better than his blundering attempts! The other reason is an even better one, and you shall know it soon. I think--I do not know-- I think, and I hope that the fat high priest of Jinendra is playing me false, and has gone to Samson sahib to make a bargain with him. Samson sahib will consent to no bargains with that fat fool, if I am any judge of hucksters; but he will have his ears on end and his eyes sore with over- watchfulness from now forward! Oh, I hope Jinendra's priest has gone to him! I tried to stir treachery in his mind by brow-beating him about the bargain that be tried to force from me!"

"But what are you and the priest and Samson all bargaining about?" demanded Tess.

"The treasure of Sialpore! But I make no bargains! I, who know where the treasure is! Why should I offer to share what is mine? I will have a marriage contract drawn, and you shall be a witness. That treasure is my dowry. Listen! Bubru Singh my father died without a son--the first of all that long line who left no son to follow him. The custom was that he should tell his son, and none else, the secret of the treasure. He hated Gungadhura; and, not knowing which the English would choose for his successor, Gungadhura or another man, he told no one, making only hints to my mother on his death-bed and saying that if I, his daughter, ever developed brains enough to learn the secret of the treasure, then I might also have wit enough to win the throne and all would be well."

"And you discovered it? How did you discover it?"

"Not I."

"Who then?"

"Your husband did!"

"My husband? Dick Blaine? But that can't be true; he never told me; he tells me everything."

"Perhaps he would have told if he had understood. He hardly understands yet. Only in part--a little."

"Then how in the world--?"

Yasmini's golden laugh cut short the question as she rose to her feet with a glance at the westering sun.

"Let us go. Two hours from now we shall cross the border into another state. Two hours after night-fall our journey is ended. Then the last game begins--the last chukker--and I win!"

Tess wished then that they had never halted! The rest had given her muscles time to stiffen, and her nerves the opportunity to learn how tired they were. As the camels rose jerkily and followed their leader in line at the same fast pace as before she grew sick with the agony of aching bones and the utter weariness of motion repeated again and again without varying or ceasing. Every ligament in her body craved only stillness, but the camel's unaccustomed thrust and sway continued, repeated to infinity, until her nerves grew numb and she was hardly conscious of time, distance, or direction.

Once again there was pursuit, but Tess was hardly conscious of it-- hardly realized that shots were fired--clinging to the saddle in the misery of a sickness more weakening and deathly than the sort small boats provide at sea. The sun went down and left her cooler, but not recovered. She knew nothing of boundaries, or of the changing nature of the country- side. It meant nothing to her that they were passing great trees now, and that once they crossed a stream by a wide stone bridge. The only thought that kept drumming in her mind was that Dick, the ever dependable, had misinformed her. She had "fetched it up"--a dozen times. True to his instruction, she had "carried on." But it did not pass! She felt more sick, more agonized, more weary every minute.

But at last, because there is an end even to the motion of a camel, in this world of example instances, about two hours after nightfall the caravan halted in the shadow of great trees beside a stone house with a wall about it. Her camel knelt with a motion like a landslide, and Tess fell off forward on the ground and fainted, only snatched away by strong hands in the nick of time to save her from the camel's teeth. Uncertain, unforgiving brutes are camels--ungrateful for the toil men put them to. For an hour after that she was only dimly conscious of being laid on something soft, and of supple, tireless women's hands that kneaded her, and kneaded her, taking the weary muscles one by one and coaxing them back to painlessness.

So she did not see the dog arrive--Trotters, the Rampore-Great Dane, cousin to half the mongrel stock of Hindustan, slobbering on a package that his set jaws hardly could release; Yasmini, scornful of the laws of caste and ever responsive to a true friend, pried it loose with strong fingers. It was she, too, who saw to the dog's needs--fed him and gave him drink--removed a thorn from his forefoot and made much of him. She even gave Bimbu food, with her own hands, and saw that his driver and camel had a place to rest in, before she undid the string that bound the leather jacket of the package.

Bimbu on the camel had led the dog by the short route and, having nothing to be robbed of, had had small trouble with policemen on the way.

The first thing Tess was really conscious of when she regained her senses was a great dog that slumbered restlessly beside her own finger-marked, disheveled, dusty, fifty-dollar hat on the floor near by, awaking at intervals to sniff her hand and reassure himself--then returning to the hat to sleep, and gallop in his sleep; a rangy, gray, enormous beast with cavernous jaws that she presently recognized as Trotters.

Then came the maids again, afraid for their very lives of the dog, but still more mindful of Yasmini's orders. They resumed their kneading of stiff muscles, rubbing in oil that smelt of jasmine, singing incantations while they worked. They lifted the bed away from the wall, and one of the women danced around and around it rhythmically, surrounding Tess with what the West translates as "influence"--the spell that all the East knows keeps away evil interference.

Last of all by candlelight, Yasmini came, scented and fresh and smiling as the flower from which she has her name, dressed now in the soft-hued silken garments of a lady of the land.

"Where did you get them?" Tess asked her.

"These clothes? Oh, I have friends here. Have no fear now--there are friends on every side of us."

She showed Tess a letter, pierced in four places by a dog's eye-teeth.

"This is from Samson sahib. Do you remember how I prayed that Jinendra's priest might think to play me false? I think he has. Some one has been to Samson sahib. Hear this:

"'The Princess Yasmini Omanoff Singh,
"'Your Highness,
"'Word has reached me frequently of late of pressure brought
to bear on you from certain quarters, and hints have been dropped
in my hearing that the object of the pressure is to induce you to
disclose a secret you possess. Let me assure you that my official
protection from all illegal restraint and improper treatment is at your
service. Further, that in case your secret is such as concerns vitally
the political relations, present or future, of Sialpore the proper
person to whom to confide it is myself. Should you see your way to
take that only safe course, you may rest assured that your own
interests will be cared for in every way possible.
"'I have the honor to be,
"'Your Highness' obedient servant,
"'Roland Samson, K. C. S. I.'"

"That looks fair enough," said Tess. "I dislike Samson for reasons of my own, but--"

"Hah!" laughed Yasmini. "He makes love to you! Is it not so? He would make love to me if I gave him opportunity! What a jest for the gods if I should play that game with him and make him marry me! I could! I could make of Samson a power in India! But the man would weary me with his conceit and his 'orders from higher up' within a week. I can have power without his help! What a royal jest, though, to marry Samson and intrigue with all the jealous English wives who think they pull the strings of government!"

"You'd get the worst of it," laughed Tess.

"Maybe. I shall never try it. I am more of the East than the West. But I will answer Samson. Bimbu shall remain here lest he talk too much, but the dog shall take a letter to Tom Tripe at dawn. Samson knew hours ago that I have flown the nest. He will wonder how Tom Tripe holds communication with me, and so swiftly, and will have greater respect for him--which may serve us later."

"Let me add a letter to my husband then, to tell him I'm safe."

"Surely. But now eat. Eat and be strong. Can you stand? Can you walk? Have the maids put new life in you?"

Tess was astonished at her swift recovery. She was a little stiff--a little weak--a little tired; but she could walk up and down the room with her natural gait and Yasmini clapped her hands.

"I will order food brought. Listen! Tonight I am Abhisharika. Do you know what that is--Abhisharika?"

Tess shook her head.

"I go to my lover of my own accord!"

"That sounds more like West than East!"

"You think so? You shall come with me and see! You shall play the part of cheti (the indispensable hand-maiden)--you and Hasamurti. You must dress like her. Simply be still and watch, and you shall see!"

Chapter Thirteen

Of what use were the gift of gods, The buoyant sweetness of a virgin state, The blossomy delight of youth Ablow with promise of fruit consummate; What use the affluence of song And marvel of delicious motion meet To grace the very revelings of Fawn, Could she not lay them at another's feet?

"I am a king's daughter!"

That was a night when the full-moon rose in a sea of silver, and changed into amber as it mounted in the sky. The light shone like liquid honey, and the shadowed earth was luminous and still. The very deepest of the shadows glowed with undertones of half-suggested color. Hardly a zephyr moved.

"You see?" said Yasmini. "The gods are our servants! They have set the stage!"

Hand in hand--Yasmini in the midst in spotless silken white; Tess and Hasamurti draped in black from head to foot--they left the house by a high teak door in the garden wall and started down a road half hidden by lacy shadows. All three wore sandals on bare feet, and Tess was afraid at first of insects.

"Have no fear of anything tonight," Yasmini whispered. "The gods are all about us! Wasuki, who is king of all the snakes, is on our side!"

One could not speak aloud, for the spell of mystery overlay everything. They walked into the very heart of silent beauty. Overhead, enormous trees, in which the sacred monkeys slept, dropped tendrils like long arms yearning with the love of mother earth. Here and there the embers of a dying fire glowed crimson, and the only occasional sound was of sleepy cattle that chewed the cud contentedly--or when a monkey moved above them to change his roost. Once, a man's voice singing by a fireside conjured back for a moment the world's hard illusion; but the stillness and the mystery overcame him too, and all was true again, and wonderful.

Hand in hand they followed the road to its end and turned into a lane between thorn hedges. Now the moon shone straight toward them and there was no shadow, so that the earth was bright golden underfoot-- a lane of mellow light on which they trod between fantastic woven walls. At the end of the lane they came into a clearing at a forested-edge, where an ancient ruined temple nestled in the shadow of great trees, its stone front and the seated image of a long-neglected god restored to more than earthly sanctity and peace by the cool, caressing moonlight.

"Jinendra again!" Yasmini whispered. "Always Jinendra! His priests are rascals, but the god himself is kind! When I am maharanee, that temple shall stand whole again!"

In front of the temple, between them and the trees, was a pond edged with carved stone. Lotus leaves floated on the water, and one blue flower was open wide to welcome whoever loved serenity.

Still hand in hand, they crossed the clearing mid-way to the pond, and there Yasmini bade them stand.

"Draw no nearer. Only stand and watch."

She had a great blue flower in her bosom that heaved and fell for proof of her own emotion. Hasamurti's hand was trembling as she nestled closer, and Tess felt her own pulsing to quick heart-beats as she clasped the girl's.

Yasmini left them, and walked alone to the very edge of the pond, where she stood still for several minutes, apparently gazing at her own reflection in the moonlit water--or perhaps listening. There was no sign of any one else, nor sound of footfall. Then, as if the reflection satisfied, or she had heard some whisper meant for her and none else, she began to dance, moving very slowly in the first few rhythmic steps, resembling a water-goddess, the clinging silk displaying her young outline as she bent and swayed.

She might have been watching her reflection still, so close she danced to the water's edge with her back turned to the moon. But presently the dance grew quicker, and extended arms that glistened in the light like ivory increased the sinuous perfection of each pose. Still there was nothing wild in it--nothing but the very spirit of the moonlight, beautiful and kind and full of peace. She moved now around the water, in a measured cadence that by some unfathomable witchery of her devising conveyed a thought of maidenhood and modesty. It dawned on Tess, who watched her spell-bound, that there was not one immodest thought in all Yasmini's throng of moods, but only a scorn of all immodesty and its pretensions. And whether that was art, or sheer expression of the truth within her rather than a recognition of the truth without, Tess never quite determined; for it is easier to judge spoken word and unexpected deed than to see the thought behind it. That night Yasmini's mood was simpler and less unseemly than the very virgin dress she wore.

Presently she danced more swiftly, making no sound, so phantom-light and graceful that the rhythm of her movement carried her with scarce a touch to earth. That was strength as well as art, but the art made strength seem spiritual power to float on air. Gaiety grew now into her cadences-- the utter joy of being young. She seemed to revel in a sense of buoyancy that could lift her above all the grim deceptions of the world of wrath and iron, and make her, like the moonlight, all-kind, all-conquering. Three times round the pond she leapt and gamboled in an ecstasy of youth undisillusioned.

Then the dance changed, though there was yet in it the heart of gaiety. There moved now in the steps a sense of mystery--a consciousness of close infinity unfolding, far more subtly signified than by the clumsy shift of words. And she welcomed all the mystery--greeted it with outstretched arms--was glad of it, and eager-impetuous to know the new worlds and the ways undreamed of. Minute after minute, rhapsody on rhapsody, she wooed the near, untouchable delights that, like the moonbeams, seem but empty nothing when the drudges seize them for their palaces of mud.

Nor did she woo in vain. There were stanzas in her dance of simple gratitude, as if the spirit of the mystery had found her mood acceptable and dowered her with new ability to see, and know, and understand. Even the two watchers, hand in hand a hundred paces off, felt something of the power of vision she had gained, and thrilled at its wonder.

Borne on new wings of fancy now her dance became a very image of those infinite ideas she had seen and felt. She herself, Yasmini, was a part of all she saw--mistress of all she knew--own sister of the beauty in the moonlight and the peace that filled the glade. The night itself-- moon, sky and lotus-dappled water--trees -growth and grace and stillness, were part of her and she of them. Verily that minute she, Yasmini, danced with the gods and knew them for what in truth they are--ideas a little lower, a little less essential than the sons of men.

Then, as if that knowledge were the climax of attainment, and its ownership a spell that could command the very lips of night, there came a man's voice calling from the temple in the ancient Rajasthani tongue.

"Oh, moon of my desire! Oh, dear delight! Oh, spirit of all gladness! Come!"

Instantly the dance ceased. Instantly the air of triumph left her. As a flower's petals shut at evening, fragrant with promise of a dawn to come, she stood and let a new mood clothe her with humility; for all that grace of high attainment given her were nothing, unless she, too, made of it a gift. That night her purpose was to give the whole of what she knew herself to be.

So, with arms to her sides and head erect, she walked straight toward the temple; and a man came out to meet her, tall and strong, who strode like a scion of a stock of warriors. They met mid-way and neither spoke, but each looked in the other's eyes, then took each other's hands, and stood still minute after minute. Hasamurti, gripping Tess's fingers, caught her breath in something like a sob, while Tess could think of nothing else than Brynhild's oath:

"O Sigurd, Sigurd,
Now hearken while I swear!
The day shall die forever
And the sun to darkness wear
Ere I forget thee, Sigurd...."

Her lips repeated it over and over, like a prayer, until the man put his arm about Yasmini and they turned and walked together to the temple. Then Hasamurti tugged at Tess, and they followed, keeping their distance, until Yasmini and her lover sat on one stone in the moonlight on the temple porch, their faces clearly lighted by the mellow beams. Then Tess and Hasamurti took their stand again, hand in each other's hand, and watched once more.

It was love-making such as Tess had never dreamed of,--and Tess was no familiar of hoydenish amours; gentle--poetic--dignified on his part--manly as the plighting of the troth of warriors' sons should be. Yasmini's was the attitude of simple self-surrender, stripped of all pretense, devoid of any other spirit than the will to give herself and all she had, and knowledge that her gift was more than gold and rubles.

For an hour they sat together murmuring questions and reply, heart answering to heart, eyes reading eyes, and hand enfolding hand; until at last Yasmini rose to leave him and he stood like a lord of squadroned lances to watch her go.

"Moon of my existence!" was his farewell speech to her.

"Dear lord!" she answered. Then she turned and went, not looking back at him, walking erect, as one whose lover is the son of twenty kings. Without a word she took Tess and Hasamurti by the hand, and, looking straight before her with blue eyes glowing at the welling joy of thoughts too marvelous for speech, led them to the lane--the village street--and the door in the wall again. The man was still gazing after her, erect and motionless, when Tess turned her head at the beginning of the lane; but Yasmini never looked back once.

"Why did you never tell me his name?" Tess asked; but if Yasmini heard the question she saw fit not to answer it. Not a word passed her lips until they reached the house, crossed the wide garden between pomegranate shrubs, and entered the dark door across the body of a sleeping watchman--or a watchman who could make believe he slept. Then:

"Good night!" she said simply. "Sleep well! Sweet dreams! Come, Hasamurti--your hands are cleverer than the other women's."

Daughter of a king, and promised wife of a son of twenty kings, she took the best of the maids to undress her, without any formal mockery of excuse. Two of the other women were awake to see Tess into bed-- no mean allowance for a royal lady's guest.

Very late indeed that night Tess was awakened by Yasmini's hand stroking the hair back from her forehead. Again there was no explanation, no excuse. A woman who was privileged to see and hear what Tess had seen and heard, needed no apology for a visit in the very early hours.

"What do you think of him?" she asked. "How do you like him? Tell me!"

"Splendid!" Tess answered, sitting up to give the one word emphasis. "But why did you never tell me his name?"

"Did you recognize him?"

"Surely! At once--first thing!"

"No true-born Rajputni ever names her lover or her husband."

"But you knew that I know Prince Utirupa Singh. He came to my garden party!"

"Nevertheless, no Rajputni names her lover to another man or woman-- calling him by his own name only in retirement, to his face."

"Why--he--isn't he the one who Sir Roland Samson told me ought to have been maharajah instead of Gungadhura?"

Yasmini nodded and pressed her hand.

"Tomorrow night you shall see another spectacle. Once, when Rajputana was a veritable land of kings, and not a province tricked and conquered by the English, there was a custom that each great king held a durbar, to which princes came from everywhere, in order that the king's daughter might choose her own husband from among them. The custom died, along with other fashions that were good. The priests killed it, knowing that whatever fettered women would increase their sway. But I will revive it-- as much as may be, with the English listening to every murmur of their spies and the great main not yet thrown. I have no father, but I need none. I am a king's daughter! Tomorrow night I will single out my husband, and name him by the title under which I shall marry him--in the presence of such men of royal blood as can be trusted with a secret for a day or two! There are many who will gladly see the end of Gungadhura! But I must try to sleep--I have hardly slept an hour. If a maid were awake to sing to me--but they sleep like the dead after the camel-ride, and Hasamurti, who sings best, is weariest of all."

"Suppose I sing to you?" said Tess.

"No, no; you are tired too."

"Nonsense! It's nearly morning. I have slept for hours. Let me come and sing to you."

"Can you? Will you? I am full of gladness, and my brain whirls with a thousand thoughts, but I ought to sleep."

So Tess went to Yasmini's room, and sat beneath the punkah crooning Moody and Sankey hymns and darky lullabies, until Yasmini dropped into the land of dreams. Then, listening to the punkah's regular soft swing, she herself fell forward on her arms, half-resting on the bed, half on the chair, until Hasamurti crept in silently and, laughing, lifted her up beside Yasmini and left her there until the two awoke near noon, wondering, in each other's arms.

Chapter Fourteen

He who is most easily persuaded is perhaps a fool, for the world is full of fools, and it is dangerous to deal with them. But perhaps he is a man who sees his own advantage hidden in the folds of your proposal; and that is dangerous too. --Eastern Proverb

"Acting on instructions from Your Highness!"

It tickled Gungadhura's vanity to have an Englishman in his employ; but Tom Tripe never knew from one day to another what his next reception would be. On occasion it would suit the despot's sense of humor to snub and slight the veteran soldier of a said-to-be superior race; and he would choose to do that when there was least excuse for it. On the other hand, he recognized Tom as almost indispensable; he could put a lick and polish on the maharajah's troops that no amount of cursing and coaxing by their own officers accomplished. Tom understood to a nicety that drift of the Rajput's martial mind that caused each sepoy to believe himself the equal of any other Rajput man, but permitted him to tolerate fierce disciplining by an alien.

And Tom had his own peculiarities. Born in a Shorncliffe barrack hut, he had a feudal attitude toward people of higher birth. As for a prince-- there was almost no limit to what he would not endure from one, without concerning himself whether the prince was right or wrong. Not that he did not know his rights; his limitations were not Prussian; he would stand up for his rights, and on their account would answer the maharajah back more bluntly and even offensively than Samson, for instance, would have dreamed of doing. But a prince was a prince, and that was all about it.

So, on the morning following the flight of Yasmini and Tess, Tom, sore-eyed from lack of sleep but with an eye-opener of raw brandy inside him, and a sense of irritation due to the absence of his dog, roundly cursed nine unhappy mahouts for having dared let an elephant steal his rum--drilled two companies of heavy infantry in marching order on parade until the sweat ran down into their boots and each miserable man saw two suns in the sky where one should be--dismissed them with a threat of extra parades for a month to come unless they picked their feet up cleaner--and reported, with his heart in his throat, at Gungadhura's palace.

As luck would have it, the Sikh doctor was just leaving. It always suited that doctor to be very friendly with Tom Tripe, because there were pickings, in the way of sick certificates that Tom could pass along to him, and shortcomings that Tom could overlook. He told Tom that the maharajah was in no mood to be spoken to, and in no condition to be seen.

"Then you go back and tell his highness," Tom retorted, "that I've got to speak with him! Business is business!"

The doctor used both hands to illustrate.

"But his cheek is cut with a great gash from here to here! He was testing a sword-blade in the armory, last night, and it broke and pierced him."

"Hasn't a soldier like me seen wounds before? I don't swoon away at the sight of blood! He can do his talking through a curtain if he's minded!"

"I would not dare, Mr. Tripe! He has given orders. You must ask one of the eunuchs--really."

"I thought you and I were friends?" said Tom, with whiskers bristling.

"Always! I hope always! But in this instance--"

Tom folded both arms behind his back, drill-master-on-parade fashion.

"Suit yourself," he answered. "Friendship's friendship. Scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. I want to see his highness. I want to see him bad. You're the man that's asked to turn the trick for me."

"Well, Mr. Tripe, I will try. I will try. But what shall I tell him?"

Tom hesitated. That doctor was a more or less discreet individual, or he would not have been sent for. Besides, he had lied quite plausibly about the dagger-wound. But there are limits.

"Tell him," he said presently, "that I've found the man who left that sword in his armory o' purpose for to injure him! Say I need private and personal instructions quick!"

The doctor returned up the palace steps. Ten minutes later he came down again smiling, with the word that Tom was to be admitted. In a hurry, then, Tom's brass spurs rang on Gungadhura's marble staircase while a breathless major-domo tried to keep ahead of him. One takes no chances with a man who can change his mind as swiftly as Gungadhura habitually did. Without a glance at silver shields, boars' heads, tiger-skins, curtains and graven gold ornaments beyond price, or any of the other trappings of royal luxury, Tom followed the major-domo into a room furnished with one sole divan and a little Buhl-work table. The maharajah, sprawling on the divan in a flowered silk deshabille and with his head swathed in bandages, ignored Tom Tripe's salute, and snarled at the major-domo to take himself out of sight and hearing.

Soldier-fashion, as soon as the door had closed behind him Tom stood on no ceremony, but spoke first.

"There was a fracas last night, Your Highness, outside a certain palace gate." He pronounced the word to rhyme with jackass, but Gungadhura was not in a mood to smile. "An escaped elephant bumped into the gate and bent it. The guard took to their heels; so I've locked 'em all up, solitary, to think their conduct over."

The maharajah nodded.

"Good!" he said curtly.

"I cautioned the relieving guard that if they had a word to say to any one they'd follow the first lot into cells. It don't do to have it known that elephants break loose that easy."

"Good!"

"Subsequently, acting on instructions from Your Highness, I searched the cellar of Mr. Blaine's house on the hill, Chamu the butler holding a candle for me." "What did he see? What did that treacherous swine see?" snapped Gungadhura, pushing back the bandage irritably from the corner of his mouth.

"Nothing, Your Highness, except that he saw me lift a stone and look under it."

"What did you see under the stone?"

"A silver tube, all wrought over with Persian patterns, and sealed at both ends with a silver cap and lots o' wax."

"Why didn't you take it, you idiot?"

"Two reasons. Your Highness told me to report to you what I saw, not to take nothing. And Mr. Blaine came to the top of the cellar ladder and was damned angry. He'd have seen me if I'd pinched a cockroach. He was that angry that he locked the cellar door afterward, and nailed it down, and rolled a safe on top of it!"

"Did he suspect anything?"

"I don't know, Your Highness."

"What did you tell him?"

"Said I was looking for rum."

"Doubtless he believed that; you have a reputation! You are an idiot! If you had brought away what you saw under that stone, you might have drawn your pension today and left India for good!"

Tom made no answer. The next move was Gungadhura's. There was silence while a gold clock on the wall ticked off eighty seconds.

"You are an idiot!" Gungadhura broke out at last. "You have missed a golden opportunity! But if you will hold your tongue--absolutely--you shall draw your pension in a month or two from now, with ten thousand rupees in gold into the bargain!"

"Yes, Your Highness." (A native of the country would have begun to try to bargain there and then. But there are more differences than one between the ranks of East and West; more degrees than one of dissimulation. Tom gravely doubted Gungadhura's prospect of being in position to grant him a pension, or any other favor, a month or two from then. A native of the country would have bargained nevertheless.

"Keep that guard confined for the present. You have my leave to go."

Tom saluted and withdrew. He was minded to spit on the palace steps, but refrained because the guard would surely have reported what he did to Gungadhura, who would have understood the act in its exact significance.

As he left the palace yard he passed a curtained two-wheeled cart drawn by small humped bulls, and turned his head in time to see the high priest of Jinendra heave his bulk out from behind the curtains and wheezily ascend the palace steps.

"A little ghostly consolation for the maharajah's sins!" he muttered, as he headed toward his own quarters for another stiff glass of brandy and some sleep. He felt he needed both--or all three!

"If it's true there's no hell, then I'm on velvet!" he muttered. "But I'm a liar! A liar by imputation--by suggestion--by allegation--by collusion-- and in fact! Now, if I was one o' them Hindus I could hire a priest to sing a hymn and start me clean again from the beginning. Trouble is, I'm a complacent liar! I'll do it again, and I know it! Brandy's the right oracle for me!"

But there was no consolation, ghostly or otherwise, being brought to Gungadhura. Jinendra's fat high priest, short-winded from his effort on the stairs, with aching hams and knees that trembled from exertion, was ushered into a chamber some way removed from that in which Tom Tripe had had his interview. The maharajah lay now with his head on the lap of Patali, his favorite dancing girl, in a room all scent and cushions and contrivances. (That was how Yasmini learned about it afterward.)

It was against all the canons of caste and decency to accord an interview to any one in that flagrant state of impropriety--to a high priest especially. But it amused Gungadhura to outrage the priest's alleged asceticism, and to show him discourtesy (without in the least affecting his own superstitious scruples in the matter of religion.) Besides, his head ached, and he liked to have Patali's resourcefulness and wit to reenforce his own tired intuition.